Factsheet - leclaire

LE CLAIRE
SEIT 1982
KUNST
ELBCHAUSSEE 386 ∙ 22609 HAMBURG ∙ TELEFON: +49 (0)40 881 06 46 ∙ FAX: +49 (0)40 880 46 12
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LE CLAIRE
SEIT 1982
KUNST
OTTO DIX
1891 Untermhaus nr. Gera - Singen 1969
Oak (Study of a Tree)
Pen and brown ink, silverpoint on prepared wove paper; 1933.
Signed in pencil lower right: Dix.
625 x 453 mm
PROVENANCE: Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin – Anonymous sale, Villa Grisebach, A 57, May 1997, no. 154,
repr. – Private collection, Berlin
LITERATURE: Galerie Nierendorf, exhib. cat., Berlin 1966, no. 96, repr. – Ulrike Lorenz, Otto Dix. Das
Werkverzeichnis der Zeichnungen und Pastelle, Weimar 2003, no. IE 7.30.11
Otto Dix experienced the First World War as an NCO and was almost uninterruptedly at a number of
fronts. The horror, brutality and futility of war permeated his work in the next decade. He developed
a harsh form of realism and combined it with acerbic, politically explosive social criticism. He was one
of the first artists whose work was to be condemned by the Nazi regime as ‘degenerate’. He was dismissed from his professorial post at the Dresden Academy in 1933 and banned from exhibiting his work.
He left Dresden to seek refuge at Schloß Randegg near Singen, later moving to Hemmenhofen near
Lake Constance, in south-west Germany. Here, he withdrew into what can be termed as an ‘inner
emigration’ and began to intensify his interest in the drawing techniques of the Old Masters,
particularly Dürer, Cranach and Altdorfer. Having spent fifteen years at the centre of the avant-garde
worlds of Berlin and Dresden, where he had found stimulus in the visual and intellectual climate of
city life as a painter of powerfully expressive, at times shocking, human figures, now nature would
become the cornerstone of his work. In 1934 he began to work on landscapes ‒ subjects included Lake
Constance, its surrounding countryside, and the Engadin. These subjects served him as vehicles to
express his artistic thinking, as a stage for aesthetic analysis and as a space to communicate subjective
emotional experience ‒ much in the Romantic tradition. In his handling of landscape he followed
the drawing techniques of the Old Masters and between 1934 and 1939 produced images situated
somewhere between descriptive and idealized depictions of nature. They are remarkable for their
technical virtuosity and precision. 1
The present pen-and-ink drawing is from a group of large-format studies of trees. Dix executed a
number of nature studies and over two hundred drawings in silverpoint ‒ landscapes, portraits and
nudes ‒ in the years 1931 to 1944. 2 This study convincingly documents Dix’s intention to engage with
1
Ulrike Lorenz, Otto Dix, Arbeiten auf Papier, exhib. cat., Zurich 2009, p. 4.
Dix’s interest in the medium of silverpoint emerged when he was teaching painting at the Dresden Academy of Art
between 1927 and 1933. The Academy was a highly important centre for the study of artistic techniques and materials,
particularly when Kurt Wehlte was Professor of Material Science and Painting Techniques between 1925 and 1931. Dix’s
earliest silverpoint drawings were very probably influenced by his interaction with Wehlte, who is known to have
experimented in silverpoint in the late 1920s. See Bruce Weber, Modern and Contemporary Drawing in Metalpoint, in Drawing in Silver
and Gold – Leonardo to Jasper Johns, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington and the British Museum, London,
Princeton and Oxford 2015, pp. 229-230.
2
ELBCHAUSSEE 386 ∙ 22609 HAMBURG ∙ TELEFON: +49 (0)40 881 06 46 ∙ FAX: +49 (0)40 880 46 12
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LE CLAIRE
SEIT 1982
KUNST
the techniques deployed by the Old Masters, and is a fine example of his working methods during his
enforced inner emigration.
The art dealer Karl Nierendorf, who once owned the present drawing, was an important figure in
Dix’s life. He founded the Galerie Nierendorf in Berlin, staged several one-man exhibitions of Dix’s
work and also featured it in a number of joint exhibitions. Nierendorf’s important ‘Otto Dix ‒ Franz
Lenk’ exhibition, staged in January to March 1935, showcased Dix’s entire output of landscapes of the
countryside surrounding Schloß Randegg. The aim of the exhibition was to rehabilitate Dix’s reputation and profit the gallery. Public response was mixed. His work was well-received by some but
many others criticized the exhibition as an attempt by him to curry favour and worm his way into
the higher echelons of the German art-world. Nierendorf remarked to Hans Koch: 3 People are saying
[…] that Dix has ‘eingelenkt’ 4 [lit.: knuckled under] and they’re claiming that the theme of the exhibition is: ‘Der
Mensch denkt und Dix lenkt.’ 5
3
Anja Walter-Ris, Die Geschichte der Galerie Nierendorf – Kunstleidenschaft im Dienst der Moderne, Berlin and New York, 1920–1995, phil.
Diss., Berlin 2003, p. 199.
4
This is a play on words. The name of Dix’s co-exhibitor was Lenk. Lenk(en) in German means to steer, to manage. Frank
Lenk (1898-1968) was a Neue Sachlichkeit artist.
5
See note 4. Another play on words. It is based on the saying: Der Mensch denkt, Gott lenkt [‘Man proposes, God disposes’.
Here: ‘Man proposes, Dix disposes’].
ELBCHAUSSEE 386 ∙ 22609 HAMBURG ∙ TELEFON: +49 (0)40 881 06 46 ∙ FAX: +49 (0)40 880 46 12
[email protected] ∙ WWW.LECLAIRE-KUNST.DE